JANUARY 2004

Policy Department External Policies

THE FUTURE OF THE EUROPEAN SECURITY STRATEGY: TOWARDS A WHITE BOOK ON

EUROPEAN DEFENCE

SECURITY AND DEFENCE

EN

WRITTEN EXPERTISE

March 2008

EXPO/B/SEDE/2008/16 March 2008 PE 388.944 EN

This written expertise was requested by the European Parliament's Subcommittee on Security and Defence.

It is published in the following language: English Author: Professor Jolyon Howorth

(Bath and Yale Universities) jolyon.howorth@yale.edu

Responsible Official: Dr Gerrard Quille Directorate-General for External Policies of the Union Policy Department WIB 06M 081 rue Wiertz B-1047 Brussels E-mail: gerrard.quille@europarl.europa.eu

Publisher European Parliament

Manuscript completed on 11 March 2008.

It is available on the Internet at http://www.europarl.europa.eu/activities/committees/studies.do?language=EN

If you are unable to download the information you require, please request a paper copy by e-mail : xp-poldep@europarl.europa.eu

Brussels: European Parliament, 2008.

Any opinions expressed in this document are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the official position of the European Parliament.

© European Communities, 2008.

Reproduction and translation, except for commercial purposes, are authorised, provided the source is acknowledged and provided the publisher is given prior notice and supplied with a copy of the publication.

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1. The Drivers behind ESDP

There were three fundamental drivers behind the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP): the endogenous consequences of the emergence of the EU at the turn of the century as an international actor; the exogenous consequences of the end of the Cold War, which hastened US disengagement from Europe as the centre of its strategic radar screen, contributed to the re-emergence of conflict within the European space and accelerated the processes of globalisation; the Franco-British trade off at Saint Malo, which put an end to fifty years of impasse over European defence autonomy. These drivers may have been joined by a fourth on 11 September 2001 when the US began to undergo a fundamental strategic revision – leading to National Security Strategy 2002 and the Bush doctrine – and the EU was, in its turn, forced to think through its strategic approach to the wider world – leading to the European Security Strategy 2003. These drivers constitute powerful historical and political forces which have overcome individual and national resistances to ESDP and set it in motion. It is important to understand the force behind these drivers when considering what is likely to happen next. They are still in place. Because these drivers emerge from history and geography (rather than from the political will or ambitions of individuals), ESDP has tended to take on a life of its own. It has developed in ways not initially foreseen by its main architects. First, while the Helsinki Headline Goal of 1999 was predicated on the assumed lessons of Bosnia and especially Kosovo, the strategic challenges actually taken up by the EU have involved much smaller operations, leading to the adoption of the Battle-Groups in the qualitatively different Headline Goal 2010. Second, while initially both policy-makers and the commentariat assumed the project would be essentially military, it has gradually emerged as far more of a civilian-dominated policy area, where the key challenge has become civilian-military cooperation and synergy. The Civilian Headline Goal 2008, which was only launched in late 2004, has already been overtaken by Civilian Headline Goal 2010. Third, while the first two years of ESDP’s existence were largely dominated by a debate about its relationship with NATO, that connection (while still preoccupying far too many minds) has become far less central. The project, transcending the problematic dependency on NATO of the European Security and Defence Identity (ESDI), has gradually asserted the viability of its civilian-military autonomy. Recent chatter about “Berlin-Plus in reverse” is a clear reflection of that reality. Finally, while some scoffed at ESDP’s new institutional structures as mere “wiring diagrams”, the reality (with all its imperfections) is that the Political and Security Committee (PSC), the European Union Military Committee (EUMC) and the European Union Military Staff (EUMS) have emerged, along with their support systems, as dynamic agents of a European strategic action. Europe is beginning – for the first time in sixty years – to think in strategic terms. This will be galvanised by the implementation of the Lisbon Treaty. Any analysis of the strategic future cannot be disconnected from considerations of the nature of the EU itself. There have always been two conflicting views of that nature: the EU as process and the EU as project. The United Kingdom best epitomises the former approach (which stresses pragmatism, regulation, expansion), France the latter (implying vision, political will and finalité). The

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speeches by Nicolas Sarkozy to the European Parliament on 13 November and by David Miliband to the College of Europe two days later, bring out this distinction in stark terms. It is difficult to see how these two vastly different visions of the EU’s very essence can be made to coexist1. One thing is certain: the EU cannot become a strategic actor unless it becomes much clearer what the Union is. The debate on strategy cannot be divorced from the debate on finalité, which President Sarkozy seems bent on launching. In particular, it seems self-evident that the EU-as-strategic-actor which has definitive boundaries (let’s say stopping where they now lie – the Western Balkans being already inside) will be a very different animal from the EU-as-strategic-actor with borders running from the Caucasus to Iran and Iraq and dipping down to Syria and the Levant. 2. Europe as a strategic actor

As the National Intelligence Council’s report on Mapping the Global Future concludes: “at no time since […] 1949 have the shape and nature of international alignments been in such a state of flux”2. Four possible scenarios are projected: “Davos World”; “Pax Americana”; “A New Caliphate”; and “Cycle of Fear”. If the EU is to influence the outcome, it requires lucid analyses of the deep trends in international relations. It needs, in short, a “grand strategy”. For these purposes, a grand strategy can be defined as “the calculated relationship of means to large ends” (John Gaddis), within a medium to long-term time frame. This cannot be achieved merely by pragmatism, process, or muddling through. The main elements of such a grand strategy would include the following.

• A new, more balanced and comprehensive relationship with the US. The aberrant and unhealthy relationship which structured the Cold War (hegemony/dependency) ended on 9/11/1989. The inchoate attempts jointly to define a “new world order” in the 1990s died in the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001. The US has changed and so has the EU. Their relationship – complex, multi-tiered and mutually schizophrenic – is certainly more important to each than is either’s relationship with any other global actor. But this relationship cannot be mediated through NATO, an asymmetric body in its own state of crisis. A new bilateral EU-US strategic forum urgently needs to be established.

• The EU’s “neighbourhood”, whether fixed or constantly pushing outwards,

presents multiple challenges of stabilisation. Those challenges cannot be encapsulated in a single strategic vision. The Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa pose different problems from those arising in the Mashrek and the Levant, which are different again from the imponderables of the former Soviet Union. There is, indeed, surprisingly little continuity between them. The EU-as-strategic-actor urgently needs to weigh its strategic priorities, define its objectives and select its optimum instruments to meet these challenges. Whether they realise it or not, all twenty-seven member states

1 Jolyon Howorth, “France, Britain and the Future of Europe: The Gathering Storm?”, Telos, 24 November 2007, http://www.telos-eu.com/en/article/france_britain_and_the_future_of_europe_the_gath 2 National Intelligence Council, Mapping the Global Future, December 2005, http://www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_globaltrend2020.html

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have an equal stake in getting that strategy right. One key element is, of course, relations with the Muslim world.

• As for the wider world, the growing reality is that it is structured as a

multi-polar space involving both traditional state actors and emerging regional regimes – of which the EU itself is the most evolved example. In order to avoid the realists’ nightmare of “unbalanced multi-polarity”3, the grand strategic challenge for the EU is to assist in the creation of what Giovanni Grévi has called “inter-polarity” – the combination of interdependence and multi-polarity 4 . China, India and others must be persuaded that interdependence among the major poles represents a positive sum game in which there are only winners. Such an approach can do much to facilitate a cooperative approach to delivering the Millennium Development Goals. Strategic partnerships are key to this growing multi-polarity and inter-polarity5.

• The new structure of the world suggests subtle shifts towards a post-

Westphalian order – not in the sense of invalidating state actors, but in the sense of transcending balance of power mentalities, fostering international institutions and international law, implementing effective multilateralism, defending human rights and righting humanitarian wrongs, finding the optimum role for constructive non-state actors (MNCs, NGOs and individuals), getting destructive non-state actors (terrorist networks) in perspective and dealing progressively with the global causes of despair.

• A key element of such a grand strategy will be a lucid assessment of the

balance of military and non-military, of hard and soft instruments in its delivery. A comprehensive strategy will synergise objectives and implementation across a range of policies: development, aid, trade, economics, environment, climate, culture and communication, as well as security and defence. It will focus on pro-activism rather than reaction, prevention rather than cure, nation-building rather than war-fighting, constructive engagement rather than coercive diplomacy, alliances and partnerships rather than adversaries and rivals, security (indivisible) rather than defence (divisible).

President Sarkozy has called for this strategic debate – leading to a consensual grand strategy – as an urgent priority of the French presidency in the second semester of 2008. What sorts of ideas and initiatives are currently in preparation, both in the guise of the elaboration of a national Livre Blanc and as the latter’s contribution towards a hypothetical trans-European White Book? 3. Grand Strategy and the French Presidency of the EU. The Lettre de Mission which President Sarkozy wrote to launch the Livre Blanc process speaks of “une réflexion approfondie” leading to “des choix décisifs” which 3 John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, New York, Norton, 2001 4 Giovanni Grevi, “Framing the European Strategic Debate”, forthcoming in Studia Diplomatica 5 See the papers of the EU-ISS Annual Conference 22-23 November 2007, Effective multilateralism: engaging with the new global players

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will be arrived at “sans préjugé” (“sans tabou” according to the Government web-site). All of this in a few short months… Volontarisme and the drum-beat of political will are forces that Sarkozy shares with his country and recommends regularly to his EU partners. Nick Witney recently noted, however, “the iron law that defence reviews may start by being about policy, but end by being about money”6. Between the initial ambitions and the eventual text of the Livre Blanc there will likely be a large gap. Three elements are required for the successful delivery of a strategic review: strategic vision; political capital; and economic means. Sarkozy has some of the first (though not in Gaullian or even Mitterrandian doses), but increasingly little of the second or third. The procurement items scheduled in the current loi de programmation militaire (2003-2008) have been estimated by the French Ministry of Defence to be 40% unaffordable. This could prove to be an EU blessing in disguise since it is almost certain to force France to Europeanise future procurement ambitions. The mere fact of Europeanisation does not guarantee better value for money, but it does encourage partners to pool their resources7.

Nicolas Sarkozy received the classified interim report from the President of the Livre Blanc Commission, Jean-Claude Mallet, on 4 January. There have been several leaks as to its content8, even though the official word is that “no decisions have been taken”. The list of initiatives discussed in the commentariat is exceedingly long. I shall limit myself, in the remarks that follow, to some thoughts on the most significant of them.

France’s “re-integration” into NATO’s integrated command structure.

• There is no doubt that Sarkozy seriously intends to break with the sterile Franco-US and ESDP-NATO jousting that characterised the approach of his predecessor. France intends to play a full and proactive role in NATO – on two conditions: that NATO undergo wholesale structural and political reform (also a Chirac condition); and that the counterpart to an active France in a strong NATO should be American embrace of a strong and proactive ESDP (a prospect which did not exist in 1997)9.

• Restructuring. Various French proposals have been welcomed at NATO HQ –

proposals for greater interaction and information flows between, on the one hand, the NATO Secretary General and the Political and Security Committee and, on the other hand, the HR-CFSP and the North Atlantic Council, or between the EDA and Allied Command Transformation, or for joint crisis information procedures. Symbols and atmospherics have their importance.

6 Nick Witney, “France’s Shakesperian defence review”, European Council on Foreign Relations 8 February 2008: http://www.ecfr.eu/content/entry/commentary_french_defence_review_witney/ 7 See Jean-Pierre Maulny & Fabio Liberti, “Pooling of EU Member States’ Assets in the Implementation of ESDP”, Policy Department External Policies, European Parliament, February 2008. 8 Pierre Lellouche, « 8 Propositions pour donner à l’Union une défense commune », Le Figaro, 21 January 2008 ; Jean-Pierre Jouyet, « Les Nouveaux Défis de la Politique Européenne de Securité et de Défense » in Défense Nationale et Sécurité Collective, Fevrier 2008 ; André Thiéblemont, « Le Livre Blanc sur la défense et la sécurité : la grande confusion », in Défense et Stratégie, No. 22, Janvier 2008 ; Alain Joxe, « Le Livre Blanc : Chronique », Le Débat Stratégique, No.95, Janvier 2008 9 An excellent analysis of this issue is : Frédéric Bozo, “Alliance Atlantique: la Fin de l’Exception Française ? », Document de Travail, Fondation pour l’Innovation Politique, Février 2008 : http://www.fondapol.org/v2/publication-details.php?id=261&lg=fr

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France will almost certainly rejoin the Defence Planning Committee (although probably not the Nuclear Planning Group) without conditions. But, as Hervé Morin said in Munich, it is not really clear what being part of the integrated command structure actually signifies10. French assumption of new command posts will await the outcome of the “profound restructuring” which Sarkozy is calling for. In short, any significant structural changes in the Alliance will have to await the medium term.

• Afghanistan. More significant is likely to be Sarkozy’s announcement at the

NATO summit in Bucharest, of new troop deployments to the heavy fighting in Afghanistan. But France will not be sending troops to Helmand, as the NATO Secretary General and the US Defence Secretary have urged. Any new troops will likely be sent to the Eastern provinces where US forces are battling al-Qaeda. This will allow some of those US troops to be redeployed to Helmand and it will demonstrate that France fights directly with the US where the action is fiercest – and in the post-9/11 struggle that really counts: against global terror networks. This move demonstrates France’s earnest in helping to tip the balance of the overall struggle in Afghanistan at the same time as it chalks up political capital for the main strategic negotiations over the build-up of ESDP.

• Global NATO. Sarkozy’s views on this are potentially explosive. NATO, an

alliance initially designed to deliver US commitment to European security, has imperceptibly been transmogrified into an alliance which seems increasingly intended to deliver European back-up to US global strategy. That was the result of the resolution, at Prague in November 2002, of the old “out of area” debate. While France can support US objectives (but not all the tactics) in Afghanistan, Sarkozy has stressed on numerous occasions that he rejects the idea of NATO as a global policeman. A clash in Bucharest or at the 60th anniversary summit in 2009 over several major policy discussions in NATO (further enlargement; global partnerships; new strategic concept; the NRF) is virtually inevitable. “Friend, ally non-aligned” (ami, allié, non-aligné) has been the French mantra on NATO since de Gaulle11. This, at any rate, is very unlikely to change.

• Two Pillars. Sarkozy’s plans for ESDP (see below) amount to nothing less

than the traditional French vision of two strong pillars of the Alliance, NATO itself being reeled back to its traditional role as a major military defensive actor primarily in the Euro-Atlantic area, or with “extensions” approved by all member states. ESDP will specialise in crisis management and nation-building probably across a widening geographical zone. This relationship is presented not in terms of a division of labour but in terms of “complementarity”. This might (just) be acceptable to a newly elected President Obama. But would it be acceptable to the UK and to other European member states?

10 Hervé Morin, Speech to the 44th Munich Conference on Security Policy, 9 February 2008, http://www.securityconference.de/konferenzen/rede.php?menu_2008=&menu_konferenzen=&sprache=en&id=205& 11 Hubert Vedrine, Rapport pour le Président de la République sur la France et la Mondialisation, Paris, Fayard, 2007, p.126

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The consolidation of ESDP

• Strategic Thinking. This is the major quid pro quo of France’s NATO overtures, the “absolute priority” for the French presidency. An argument constantly articulated by French officials – is that it is essential (and high time) for EU member states to begin once again to “think strategically”. France feels comfortable with the belief that her 40 years absence from the NATO command forced her to think strategically. In 1994, Henry Kissinger concluded that “the most consistent, the most creative, the most systematic thinking on strategy in Europe today takes place in France”12. In his speech to the Wehrkunde on 9 February 2008, defence minister Hervé Morin poured withering Gallic scorn on some of his EU partners who epitomised “European political resignation”, revelling in their dependency on the US and who are only likely to become strategically responsible “if they emerge from the infantilisation to which they have been reduced” by constantly playing second fiddle to Uncle Sam 13 . Morin could not have made that speech without Sarkozy’s approval. Another observer asserted that “certain member states which have prospered under the US umbrella and have neglected their defences must therefore learn again what a true spirit of defence actually means”. There are several major proposals for the promotion of EU strategic thinking.

• Operational Planning. Development of an EU operational planning HQ in

Brussels has been a political hot-potato ever since it was first included in the Presidency Conclusions at the European Council in Nice in December 2000. The French arguments for a full-blown HQ are many and varied.

o The EU needs a comprehensive upstream and downstream operations centre for EU-only missions, a permanent capacity for the evaluation of operational prospects and for the delivery of maximum synergies between member states’ inputs.

o This is increasingly the case with mixed civilian-military crisis management operations, precisely the missions the existing planning cell was given the green light for.

o The demand for such missions is so strong from around the world that, sooner or later, the capacity of the existing national PJHQs will prove inadequate.

o The EU is unlikely to restrict itself indefinitely to battle-group size missions.

o As with the issue of duplication of weapons systems, the suggestion is that ever more capacity among the basic units of the Alliance, far from being unnecessary or wasteful, can only be a good thing for everybody.

This is an issue on which there is unlikely to be anything other than ongoing tension between France and the UK, although French salesmanship of the OHQ in Washington (in the context of the Bush-Sarkozy honeymoon) is reported to have been quite successful. The US view on this issue appears to be largely pragmatic: if it is needed and if it works, why not?

12 Henry Kissinger (1994), “Dealing with de Gaulle”, in Robert O. Paxton & Nicholas Wahl (eds), De Gaulle and the United States: a centennial re-appraisal, Oxford, Berg, 1994 13 See reference under footnote 10

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• The “Big-6” proposals. During his presidential campaign, Sarkozy touted the

notion of a Directoire in ESDP between France, the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain and Poland. Leaked proposals now speak of a “mutualisation” of forces between these countries, each contributing 10,000 men to a 60,000 strong strategic force, which will act as a “pioneer group” – an example to other member states. This proposal is openly linked to the procedures for “permanent structured cooperation” in the Lisbon Treaty. The French view appears to be modelled on the proposals for a “core group” in EMU which were originally formulated by Wolfgang Schauble and Karl Lamers in 1994. This French thinking is not new. It goes back at least to the 29 April 2003 “chocolate” summit in Brussels, where structured cooperation was showcased. At that time, it was implicitly exclusionary – intended to identify the “strong” members of ESDP and to encourage them to develop their synergies. The British countered with an alternative approach which was explicitly inclusionary, seeking to tap into whatever reserve forces were available across the entire range of member states. This was soon linked to the battle-group proposals, which have, in effect, managed to bring every member state on board. The Big-6 proposals are unlikely to find a very receptive ear in London and Warsaw where the size of the proposed force (60,000 men) will be eyed suspiciously as potentially competitive with NATO (even though that 60,000 figure echoes the Helsinki Headline Goal, initially devised by the UK). Another off-shoot of the “Big-6” idea involves the Europeanisation of the overseas bases of the major EU member states14 – a counter-intuitive idea at a time when France is opening a new purely French base in the United Arab Emirates.

• Franco-British cooperation, so crucial to the launch of ESDP (even though for

somewhat contradictory reasons), is far from a lost cause. Recent reports of a “secret agenda” which has been elaborated over the past two years by a working-group established by Chirac and Blair suggest that there is still plenty of mileage in the cross-channel relationship. It is believed that the details will be revealed at the Brown-Sarkozy summit in late March. The main motivation is financial rather than strategic. Both countries are suffering from huge procurement over-runs, leading to inevitable cuts in programmes – unless they can pool their resources. The working-group’s report describes the current Franco-British relationship as being at “a historic crossroads”. Nick Witney, in his new role as analyst-at-large of the European procurement scene, reports that the Franco-British proposals “range from setting up a joint defence research fund (worth €100 million a year), to cooperation on different missiles. Various sub-systems (for combat vehicles, aero-engines, drones) and a dozen technology areas (from radar to energetics) are identified as ripe for collaboration and interdependency. Opportunities for shared in-service support of common equipments, and joint out-sourcing” are also being mooted15 . Everything will depend on the personal convictions and political courage of Gordon Brown, who will have to face down growing opposition to ESDP

14 Pierre Lellouche, « 8 Propositions pour donner a l’Union une defense commune », Le Figaro, 21 January 2008 15 Nick Witney, “Franco-British defence cooperation – a historic crossroads?”, EUObserver 27 February 2008

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among Tory MPs16 (though not among the UK public). The basic problem remains that which I outlined above: incompatible strategic visions in London and Paris both for the EU and for ESDP.

• Defence spending. French proposals will be largely exhortatory. The

benchmark for the “Big-6” (and therefore by example for all the others) will be 2% of GDP. France and the UK are currently on 2.4% and 2.3% respectively, Poland 1.8%, Italy 1.7%, Germany 1.3% and Spain 1.2%. Exhortation alone is unlikely to close that gap. Proposals on R&D will also be ambitious. It is widely repeated in French defence circles that whereas the US spends €67 billion on R&D, the EU figure is closer to €9 billion. There are two conclusions to this line of argument. First, there will have to be far greater inputs from current “sleeping partners” or “easy-riders”. Secondly, since international crises are multiplying and defence equipment costs rising exponentially, there is no getting around the fact that Europe must spend more on “defence”. Yet, while the EU currently spends approximately 50% of the US defence spend, its strategic ambitions are probably closer to 10% to 15% of US ambitions. My own view is therefore that the key lies in far more rational spending rather than in increased spending. Additional resources may well be necessary, but in the first instance, the solution lies in rationalisation, integration, sharing and pooling17.

• Collective Defence. Finally, Sarkozy has not baulked at calling for the

realisation of the elusive “D” component in ESDP. In his speech to parliamentarians on 9 January 2008, he vowed to “fight for a common defence policy”, asking, only in part rhetorically, “how can we think that Europe, one of the richest regions in the world, can live without defending itself?”. Implicitly, this constitutes yet another subtle shift in France’s defence discourse which, hitherto, has explicitly recognised that collective defence is the core function of NATO. How, he went on, can Europe claim to be independent if it lacks the capacity to defend itself? He insisted that this was “une question essentielle”. But he failed to give any further indications of his intentions. This issue (which is raised in the Lisbon Treaty (article 28A.2.) as a hypothetical possibility when the European Council – “acting unanimously” – so decides) is directly linked to that of overall strategic vision. It is an issue on which no EU consensus is yet possible. It remains to be seen how strongly France will attempt to push it.

• Miscellaneous. There is a string of other French proposals for enhancing

ESDP, including: opening up a genuine European defence market by abandoning art.296; the launch of major “structuring” projects such as space, ISR, BMD etc; the creation of a maritime strategic transport fleet; an integrated network of naval surveillance assets; intensification of joint training of military officers through the creation of the European Defence College; a military Erasmus programme; European disarmament and arms control

16 See Liam Fox, “Britain, Europe and NATO: Heading in the wrong direction”, January 31 2008, http://www.conservatives.com/tile.do?def=news.story.page&obj_id=142045&speeches=1 17 Jean-Pierre Maulny, loc.cit. in f/n 7.

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proposals; and, of course, the updating of the European Security Strategy paper. One significant absence from the list of proposals is nuclear deterrence.

Conclusions: Ambition and Rhetoric in France’s Strategic Vision Since ESDP arises from the movement of geo-strategic tectonic plates rather than from the will of politicians, there is a limit to the extent to which any one political leader can channel the project in a particular direction. However, since ESDP has long been consistent with French strategic objectives, France has perhaps a little extra purchase on its future. The main obstacles to the realisation of Sarkozy’s ambitions for the project derive from two sources: the clash of understanding, between Paris and London (and their respective partners in the EU) over the very nature of the EU project itself; and the French President’s own shrinking political and economic capital. For the EU to generate a viable grand strategy, its member states would have to agree on the broad outlines of the Union’s future. It is not clear in 2008 that such an agreement is likely. For Sarkozy successfully to persuade his EU colleagues to pursue all aspects of the proposed French route, he would need greater resources than he currently possesses. Nevertheless, the world around the EU is changing fast and the challenges deriving from the tectonic shifts of 9/11/89 and 9/11/01 will not go away. It is incumbent upon the EU to engage with these regional and global shifts in as lucid and as proactive a manner as possible. The proposals which will be forthcoming under the French presidency constitute an attempt to build on what ESDP has already become and to endow it with additional assets in order to face future challenges. ESDP’s eventual relationship with NATO, which has generated (and still generates) much ink, will depend at least as much on what happens to NATO as on political discussions inside the EU. France’s “return to NATO” will not be the celebratory affair much of the US media seems to be anticipating. It will involve hard bargaining over the restructuring and transformation of the Alliance. The key issue will be that of the ongoing relationship between US grand strategy, which features a support role for NATO, and the emergence of a clear EU strategic vision. Currently, while both sides of the Atlantic have broadly similar objectives (combating terrorism, furthering counter-proliferation, stabilising volatile regions etc), all too often they disagree on the best range of instruments to achieve those goals, as well as on the overall approach to managing each specific challenge. These tensions can best be mediated through a bilateral EU-US forum which will permit comprehensive discussion of strategy, tactics and implementation. France’s insistence that the EU collectively begin to “think strategically” should be welcomed. It is neither healthy nor, in the long run, possible for EU member states to continue to depend on the open-ended commitment of an ally which is overstretched in many parts of the world and for which Europe hardly figures on the strategic radar screen. As European integration proceeds, the strategic interests of all member states will continue to converge, as they have done throughout the EU’s history, leading to ever closer institutional cooperation, shortly to be further impelled by the Lisbon Treaty.

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The specific Livre Blanc proposals put forward by France are all positive and constructive contributions to the intra-EU debate on ESDP. The EU is currently desperately short of most types of instruments for the conduct of its growing portfolio of overseas operations. Demand for those operations is relentless. All member states (except Denmark) are involved in them and have an equal stake in their success. At the very least, it can be concluded that France is making a major contribution to the necessary debate over the strategic future of one of the EU’s most successful initiatives.